The United Kingdom is a country cursed with good luck. The only nation in the European Union not to have known either fascist or Communist dictatorship within the last century, whose imperial collapse caused chaos abroad but not on the mainland, Britain is the only country in the bloc where the political class can get away with replying to a difficult question with “Well, what’s the worst that could happen?”

The same attitude permeates our coverage of the Brexit talks, which have resumed this week as civil servants on both sides reconvene to dot the is and cross the ts.

Norway, Canada, or…?

‘ If just seven Conservative MPs dislike May’s plan, they can vote it down’

The Brexit negotiations are actually a choice between two destinations: becoming like Norway, which is outside the European Union but closely bound to it, or like Canada, which has a loose arrangement.

The essence of all trade arrangements is the exchange of freedom for trade. Norwegian politicians have opted to sacrifice freedom for trade, while their Canadian counterparts have chosen to maximise their autonomy but to trade less with the European Union.

The important thing to understand about May’s Chequers proposal is not any of the fine detail but that in the choice between whether to be Canada or Norway, she has chosen the latter: low freedom, but high trade. That puts her on a collision course with those of her MPs place a higher premium on the right to do as they please over the continued flow of commerce. Any deal that May strikes has to not only command the support of her fellow heads of government in the European Union but requires a majority in the House of Commons.

Thanks to her alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party, May has a working majority of 14, which means that if just seven Conservative MPs dislike her plan, they can vote it down, potentially leading to the United Kingdom tumbling out of the European Union without a deal at all: the worst really could happen.

That would mean food running out in supermarkets, planes not flying, and hospitals running out of medicine here in the United Kingdom and economic damage throughout the rest of Europe. And the bad news is that there is no version of Brexit that won’t irritate at least seven Conservative MPs. In fact, the one thing that the Conservative Party is likely to be able to agree on is that they don’t like May’s Brexit deal.

Where Jeremy Corbyn comes in (or doesn’t)

So you can see why people are hoping that Jeremy Corbyn will ride to the rescue and save the day. Thanks to the inconclusive result of the general election, neither party has a majority. Labour could, in theory, band together with the other political parties to change the shape of Brexit, provided enough Conservative MPs are willing to break ranks and rebel.

‘The one thing that Labour will be able to agree on is that May’s deal is not good enough’

But Corbyn has a similar problem to May’s: his MPs aren’t like wooden blocks to be positioned at the choosing of the Labour leader but freethinking individuals with their own hopes and agendas for Brexit. More than a hundred Labour MPs have broken ranks to defy Corbyn on Brexit. Of those MPs, around eight in ten have done so to make Brexit look more like that close relationship like Norway’s, but two in ten have rebelled to make Brexit get that bit closer to Canada.

So there is no choice Corbyn can make to shape Brexit as he doesn’t have enough support for either version.

Just as with the Tory party, the one thing that Labour will be able to agree on – from the likes of David Lammy, the first Labour MP to call for the referendum result to be annulled, to Kate Hoey, who wants the hardest of exits from the European Union – is that May’s deal is not good enough.

Corbyn wants to defeat the government in order to trigger an election, but while he can command a majority in the House of Commons to stop May’s version of Brexit, he cannot create a positive majority for his own version of exit, or for a referendum re-run, or to simply stop Brexit. There are not enough votes in Parliament for Britain to become Norway, or Canada, which means the only option at the end of the Brexit talks is catastrophe.

So why aren’t we more worried? Why is the press so calm? Why are most people switched off from the Brexit talks? It comes back to Britain’s historical good fortune.

We’re not a country where things have ever turned irrevocably for the worse for a significant period of time, so we think that the same will apply this time around. But the thing about luck is that it tends to run out.

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